This guide to London provides an introduction to the history of the city's great monuments, and also describes the many varied districts at the centre of this vast, diverse capital, from the City and the Inns of Court to Covent Garden, Bloomsbury, Kensington, Chelsea and Knightsbridge, explaining how they evolved and what happens there today. Individual chapters deal with the Thames, royal London and the city's parks and gardens, taking the reader beyond the usual tourist itineraries. There is also a gazetteer of places to visit outside the centre, from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and the aristocratic palaces of Syon and Osterley, to the grandeur of Greenwich, the delights of Hampstead, and the burial place of Karl Marx.